Afterwards Is

maybe a room with a window, blue, hazy
maybe night or almost morning,
outside that place where everything is
that’s not in here
maybe waking from a dream or almost
remembering something—that’s the feeling,
someone’s going, someone’s gone
or just feeling that cascade of wrong
that dying is
then the stillness
a train stopped at a station
where no one ever arrives
lost things and lost creatures,
lost to you, not that you’ve done it
not that you could have undone it
afterwards, everything just seems patched
and wrinkled, not much sense in
smoothing out or getting your pens in a line